Hà Nội by Wouter Vanhees

“Hanoi is shedding its skin. So what to make of its spirit?”, asked Wouter Vanhees, a Belgian photographer based in Hanoi since 2015.

Every Wednesday night around 10:43 p.m., when “the stars of work, family, and personal time align”, Vanhees looks for the answer by taking nocturnal scooter trips to different neighborhoods in the city, carrying his camera as an armor. He has been documenting Hanoi’s large-scale estates with apartment complexes and luxurious villas catering to its burgeoning middle class, some already inhabited, some unfinished, laying bare the scaffolding.

Wouter Vanhees practices street and documentary photography, as living in Hanoi sparked an interest in the rapid rate of urbanization of Vietnamese cities and the social implications this creates. Wouter’s work has been featured at OpenWalls Arles 2020, Angkor Photo Festival and Workshops, The Washington Post, VICE Asia, and Urbanautica, among others.

DETAILS: hardcover; 144 pages; 16cm x 21.5cm